Shovel it.

My chuckles at the “gardening is cheaper than therapy” shirts. My body’s whisperings (and sometimes its loud insistence) that running isn’t on the list of options most days these days. My back’s reminder that I sit a lot during the day.

If the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, then perhaps I won’t admit it as a problem. A discovery, let’s call it.

I need to dig.

My mother-in-law wants to seriously expand her garden this year. My father-in-law confessed he wasn’t looking forward to the load of compost in the driveway. I confessed that if he didn’t call me over when it arrived, I’d be finding something else to shovel anyway.

Like a few weeks ago when I decided my pathways were too wide and my center bed too small.

A bit of therapy here. A bit of exercise there. A bit of soul-filling-earth-bliss in the side and I have more room, easier access, and found some sweet potatoes to add to breakfast scrambles in the process.

The right bed already has three rows of corn sown in the center. It’ll get melons on a trellis on one edge, I think. Maybe on both sides… The left bed is going to try a stagger of peppers and tomatoes… I’ve had promises of sturdy, homemade cages this year. He knows the way to my heart.

Foreground, background, blooms all around.

June, the plum tree, has four varieties grafted to her dwarf trunk. This branch has yet to set fruit in the years we’ve had her.

I’d yet to prune her in the years we’ve had her.

This picture was Friday and then DH and I left the little loves at home (with his folks) and set off to a resort up the road a smidge. It was our fifteenth anniversary last week (what!?) and so we celebrated with a night of (awful) sleep, a fine dining (delicious) dinner, and an old favorite action movie playing on cable. It was splendid.

Today, the branch is ensconced in blossoms and I’m hopeful the fruit will set before the next storm unleashes downpour. And I’m hedging my bets we’re done with freezing (last average frost is a week or so away and the ten day forecast looked promising. I put out beans and corn today…)

Or perhaps this branch never fruits precisely because it blooms too soon in the spring and the rains take away any chance.

Fiend.

There’s a fiend in my house. No matter the hour, the meal, or the availability – she wants them.

And sow I put in twenty of them. And while this will not suffice to her appetites, it may help with a budding understanding of seasons, consumption, and responsibility.

Until then, and after, the clamshells that transport her fix will be cherished as squirrel and bird deterrents to her papa’s fix, potted up one final time before the giant leap for garden kind.

7-11 tomatoes.

They used to be saved Sonic cups. Then we stopped going to Sonic.

They used to not pot up larger than my hoard of 4″ pots. Then we didn’t harvest much.

Last year, I ventured into the nearby 7-11 to buy 24 Big Gulp cups. $2/sleeve and I was set. Then my one baby wrecking crew prevented saving them to this year.

Today:

“Hi, I’d like to buy a sleeve of big gulp cups, please.

– Um. Let me get the woman who can help you…

(It’s the same woman!)

“Oh, hi! We did this last spring, too. I’d like to buy a sleeve of big gulp cups, please. Actually… two sleeves this year.”

First Woman – Can I ask what you do with these?

” I pot up my tomatoes.”

Second Woman – They’re on the house this year. Be sure you bring any extra tomatoes this way. There’s a donation jar for the food bank down the counter if you’re so inclined.

“Will do!”

They were overdue and hungry, hence the yellow here and there. Maybe ten more days, maybe three weeks. Then they’ll be potted up to their necks for the third and final time, getting their roots a good 12-18″ deep to weather our hot, dry summers for a second harvest come fall.

I feel you.

I don’t blame you, little blossom. I get that you’re down. I’m down. A lot of us are down.

How do we stand tall? When the drops are beating down on your head, the sorrow and worry on mine, the horrors of the world on so many.

But stand tall we must. Stand up, speak out, and make change. Inertia is strong, but we are stronger. The power in place is tall, but we can lift one another up taller yet.

Rise with me, little blossom. Do not bow too long.

Nibbles and bits

The cauliflower started to rot, so most are harvested smaller. The carrots are still being thinned, so we’ll have bigger ones soon.

More peas are up and new carrots as well. It’s going between freezing and 80 day to day. A bit of a challenge for the brassicae but awakening the perennials nicely.

Dewey decimal drawings.

Inside is a face covered in crayon. A mug of coffee half gone. A breakfast grandly attempted which achieved a modicum of success. Two very special notes: the names she first gave us written on notes in her own hand.

Outside, the fog is burning off in the sun’s beams of day awakening.

It is time for shoes until the ground wand and the day swings full.